Sep. 12—Armetta's Restaurant & Pizzeria owner Erin McLaughlin wonders now if what she witnessed Saturday night was her livelihood floating by.
Three days after torrential rain swamped the Route 11 commercial district in South Abington Twp. and Clarks Summit, transforming parts of Northern Boulevard into a raging river, most businesses were open as usual Tuesday.
Armetta's was one of the exceptions, and the frustration was wearing on McLaughlin.
"We are thankful that none of us were injured — none of the customers, none of the staff — but unfortunately we lost pretty much most of everything else," she said as a crew from a restoration company, Damage Control Inc., worked inside the restaurant at 329 Northern Blvd.
"Insurance is telling us every day that they are going to do the bare minimum. They're not covering loss of income. They're not covering employee wages. They're not covering the contents of my coolers. I really don't know where I'm turning."
Across hard-hit areas of the Abingtons and parts of West Scranton and North Scranton, cleanup and recovery efforts continued in the wake of the destructive flash-flooding.
Lackawanna County emergency management officials met at the county 911 center in Jessup with officials from the municipalities impacted by the flooding to review the next steps in the process for seeking assistance to rebuild public infrastructure.
"It's just so they are on the same page on what they need to report back to us and (the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency)," emergency management Director Tom Taylor said.
The communities represented included Scranton, along with Clarks Summit, Clarks Green and Dalton boroughs and South Abington, Newton, Ransom, Waverly and La Plume townships, he said.
Multiple municipalities in the Abingtons made disaster declarations or states of emergency in the wake of the storm. Newton Twp. Supervisor Chair Doug Pallman estimates the township sustained $1 million in damage.
Abington Heights School District announced students will return to the classroom Wednesday after a two-day shutdown.
"Numerous roads have been reopened and we feel like we are in a really good spot to resume school," Abington Heights Superintendent Chris Shaffer said.
On Laurel Hill Road in Newton Twp., Jonathan Eboli, state Department of Transportation assistant district executive for maintenance, watched as heavy machinery scooped debris mixed with water from the high side of a clogged drainage pipe under the road. Three days after the deluge, more unclogging remained and part of the road remained closed.
PennDOT workers and contractors installed new rock to control rain runoff and prevent erosion along multiple roads the county, Eboli said. He had no estimate of the expected cost.
"Essentially, this area was hit with an inch and a half of rain per hour for three to four hours," he said. "And it just inundated our systems and caused damage. And that's really what we're working on right now ... flood cleanup to restore and open our roads and stabilize them for the next event."
Eboli said debris piled up about 2 feet high on Laurel Hill Road on Saturday night, making the road impassable. He said future drainage controls may require larger ditches if rain falls more consistently as heavily as it did on Saturday.
"When we're engineering new projects, new bridges, new roadways, yes, things get upsized right now," he said. "But with what we have, an existing condition, there's not a lot that we can do to create additional capacity. So we really have to restore what's there, restore what we lost, and armor it the best that we can for the next event."
Eboli also took a reporter to Falls Road, where a crew worked to clear Falls Creek for a new temporary bridge to reopen the road. The storm overwhelmed the creek and the overflowing water partially collapsed the bridge as a car drove across. The occupants survived as their car crashed into a bridge abutment because the bridge was no longer level with the road.
PennDOT plans to install three 5-feet-wide pipes in the stream to carry creek water and will cover the pipes with earth and pavement so the road can reopen by the end of the week, Eboli said. Engineers are already designing a permanent replacement, he said.
The bridge carries about 2,100 vehicles a day, including school buses that transport 150 Abington Heights students daily, he said.
About 40 Clarks Summit University students, including members of the baseball and softball teams, converged on the Abington Little League complex on Ackerly Road to assist with cleanup of the flood-damaged fields.
"It was mostly just cleaning up the debris that got stuck in the fences, ripping out the trees that go stuck in the fences," said Jeanna LaCava-Beatty, assistant women's softball coach. "That was our job."
Caleb Morgan, a member of the baseball team from Knoxville, Tennessee, said it was an opportunity for for him and his teammates to support the community and show their love of the sport.
"We just want to continue to grow the game and you can't really do that if you don't have a field to play on," the 18-year-old freshman said.
Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti estimated at Tuesday's caucus that residents were not able to return to about 20 storm-damaged homes. Those people have places to stay, she said.
"We'll continue to work on what the options are for families that remain displaced," she said.
City crews have already been meeting with displaced residents and plan to continue, the mayor said.
Council members suggested additional meetings with affected residents to assess their needs, which the mayor agreed to.
She said officials are waiting for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency to post a link for residents and business owners to send information on damage.
At least three businesses in the Abington Shopping Center on Route 11 in Clarks Summit — the UPS Store, the Citizens Bank branch and the Wright Center Clarks Summit Practice — were closed Tuesday after taking on water that cascaded down a hillside at the back of the plaza.
The UPS Store, 1143 Northern Blvd., shut down just for the day while a contractor hired by the shopping center performed cleanup and remediation, franchise owner Kip Conforti said. The business will reopen Wednesday.
Conforti said the location has been flooded twice before, but Saturday's deluge was easily the worst. He estimated the store lost about $2,500 in corrugated cardboard materials.
"It's Mother Nature. What are you going to do?" Conforti said. "What we lost can be replaced. It's not the end of the world."
At Fine Wine & Good Spirits, 222 Northern Blvd., a sign on the door indicated the shop was closed "due to emergency." A second sign directed would-be customers to other store locations in the area.
Through the front windows, dried mud and shallow puddles of water could be seen on the floor near the front of the shop.
Employees directed questions to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board office in Harrisburg.
In an email, PLCB spokesman Shawn Kelly said the the Fine Wines & Good Spirits on Northern Boulevard was one of two damaged during the flooding, along with the store in the Keyser Oak Plaza on Keyser Avenue in Scranton.
"While we are currently assessing the conditions of both locations, it is clear that both stores will require extensive remediation before they can reopen," Kelly said. "We hope to reopen both locations in time for the holiday season."
At Armetta's, where employees piled 50-pound bags of flour in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the rising water from entering the dining room, McLaughlin said she is grateful for the support she is receiving from the community, including other restaurants.
If her insurer doesn't come through, she said, she will still find a way.
"We will come back from this," McLaughlin said. "It's not an option. I will not lose any of my staff. They are my family. I will say that: we will be back."
Staff writers Borys Krawczeniuk and Christine Lee contributed to this story.
Contact the writer: dsingleton@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9132.
